


Unfinished Business

by showgirlsteve



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Ghosts, Not Beta Read, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2731748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showgirlsteve/pseuds/showgirlsteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a man, the older cadets whisper, that isn't a man at all. A ghost, they claim, who will chill your soul but bring you home. He only appears when the situation is desperate, and so none of them can say they've seen the man themselves. But every one of them, it seems, knows somebody who knows somebody who was saved.</p><p>The ghost has frost on his blue pea coat and a thousand yard stare, and so they call him the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Business

There’s a man, the older cadets whisper, that isn't a man at all. A ghost, they claim, who will chill your soul but bring you home. He only appears when the situation is desperate, and so none of them can say they've seen the man themselves. But every one of them, it seems, knows somebody who knows somebody who was saved.

You are in training to be an officer in the Air Force, and you hear about the ghost first from other cadets in your detachment. But your school has an Army ROTC program, too, and their whispers are more quiet but stronger in number. In the Air Force, as far as you can tell, the ghost is just an inside joke, a creepy story meant to comfort and frighten young cadets in equal measures. When you have physical training with the Army cadets, though, they don’t laugh at those jokes. The ghost isn't something funny when you’re in the Army. He’s the guardian you pray to as you pray you'll never need him.

The ghost has frost on his blue pea coat and a thousand yard stare, and so they call him the Winter Soldier.

You graduate, you become a pilot, you push the Winter Soldier to the back of your mind with the rest of the military mythology you've committed to memory over the last few years. Your younger brothers ask for stories. You regale them with tales passed on to you before you collect your own, but something stops you from sharing this one. You keep it to yourself, and force yourself to forget as much as you can, but the idea sticks with you.

You fly so well that you wind up grounded. You’re recruited into intelligence, and you work with the CIA. (The men you work with never mention your ghost, but the women? The agents who wear lipstick like daggers, old-fashioned nylons like armor, they say the Winter Soldier will carry them in their time of need.)

Your partner saves your life. You save his. It doesn't take a ghost, you decide, to rescue people. If they can't save themselves, well, a unit is more than a bunch of guys running around doing the same things, but by themselves. You're a team. You'll get through it.

And then one day you don’t.

You get captured.

_It hurts._

Nobody is coming for you this time, you know this. There'll be orders against it. You try to fight through, but you lose hope as every day passes without a chance to escape. Soon you'll be too weak to fight your way out, even if the opportunity presents itself.

You're lying down, when you see him. He appears suddenly, laying next to you, not threatening at all, and that might be worse than if he'd towered over you. You jolt away.

You wonder why he’s not leading you out, but then, maybe he’s an angel of death after all. Maybe the people he saved are the outliers, the exceptions that shouldn’t be counted. Either way, you have nothing left to lose. You push yourself up against the wall, and the Winter Soldier mirrors you, with his legs crossed in front of him and his back rigidly straight. You tell the soldier everything.

You tell him about how you miss your father even through the haze of rejection, that you joined the Air Force to fly, because that was as close to space as you were ever going to get, but now you're going to die on the ground. You tell him you could never resent your brother Steve just for being your father’s chosen, that at least the Air Force gave you an education if your father wouldn’t.

The Winter Soldier, the older cadets whispered to you as you fought your way to a commission, doesn’t speak. He’ll use field signs that nobody has used in decades, he’ll tilt his head and make sure you follow, he’ll stare into your darkest secrets, but he’ll never say a word.

That’s a lie. He speaks to you.

The words are slow, as though he is struggling, but his voice doesn't crack. You expect his voice to carry the gravel of disuse, but it is smooth, and you hear hints of the east coast in each syllable.

His eyes get a little more distant. _I had a brother Steve, once, too,_ he tells the floor, and it sounds like a confession.

The Winter Soldier doesn't lead you out of danger. Your partner defies orders and does it himself. You come home and take a job in security for NASA, and realize that the ghost saved you, after all. You don’t think you would have stuck around long enough for Logan to get to you, otherwise.

(The engineers sometimes whisper about a man in the shadows who smirks at their equations and pokes at their machines. There’s no reason to think it’s the same ghost.)

Your darkest hour is not the only time you meet the soldier. At first you think you're dreaming, hallucinating, but the ghost perches at the foot of your bed long after the nightmares have passed. You huff as you ask him why, shoving your blonde hair out of your face. He follows the motion of your hand with dead eyes. _You remind me of someone_ , and he fades away again.

You don't see the soldier for a while after that, and somehow your life gets weirder instead of going back to normal for lack of a ghost following you around. Your new assignment is – well.

How are you supposed to describe Mar-vell?

You lose your job. You write a tell-all and start to get your feet back under you, even though you’re having blackouts. Your ghost looks wearier every time you come back to yourself. Eventually you figure things out. _Superpowers._ Huh.

Nick Fury remembers you from your time with the CIA. He’s waiting for you in your apartment – he stands in the same place as the Winter Soldier does when he watches you go about your day. _I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative._

Being an Avenger isn't such a bad gig, really. It’s nice to have back-up again, and even though he’s actually younger than you in experience, there’s something amazing about being led by your childhood hero. (Your ghost doesn't seem to like Avengers tower. You rarely see him when you’re there.)

One day, you find a quiet moment with Captain Rogers. He holds his sketchbook open on his lap, pencil still, as you confide in him about losing your brother Steve. It feels silly to pour your grief over one person onto someone who lost his entire world and powered on, but as soon as your words dry up, Rogers fills the silence. He doesn't mention his team or his famous lost love. Instead, he tells you about Bucky. He tells you about how worried he was for his friend, before the fall but after Azzano, and you don't know what to say. He tells you about the sorrow that crossed Bucky’s face every time he thought it wouldn't be caught, but in every picture you've ever seen of Sergeant Barnes, the man is smiling or smirking or laughing. Rogers sees you hesitate and flips through his sketchbook, folding it open when he finds what he’s looking for. _This is what I saw when he was too tired to hide_ , and he pushes the book towards you.

Without the smile, it’s easy to figure out why any reference to Sergeant Barnes has sparked an edge of familiarity since you gained a phantom companion. You let Captain Rogers believe the hitch in your breath was because of the sketch itself, and you excuse yourself.

You decide you aren't strong enough to break Captain America’s heart. (Barnes isn't strong enough, either, you realize. It’s a long, long time, before you see your ghost again.)

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I set out to write an AU where Bucky doesn't survive the fall, but becomes a ghost that helps lost soldiers find their way home, and Carol Danvers came in and said, hey, make me the POV character! (Whatever you say, Captain Marvel, your wish is my command.)
> 
> I know 616!Carol went to the Air Force Academy, but I'm using MCU as an excuse to put her in a college with a strong ROTC program instead, because reasons.
> 
>  
> 
> [Visit me on tumblr!](http://showgirlsteve.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> Kudos are great, I love you forever for comments.


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